Are our organisations lost at sea?

While humanity’s house is on fire, as climate activist Greta Thunberg puts it, many organisations look like ships on autopilot and poorly prepared for more turbulent and rough weather and waters ahead - such as the Covid-19 virus outbreak. What are the primary challenges of our organisations, and are there ways to get them in shape and on another course towards a better and more resilient future? What do we want to create, contribute, and become?

Organisations as vehicles for progress

Organisations are our main arenas for human collaboration, development, and progress. They are cornerstones in modern societies; providing products and services, pioneering research and innovation, and creating value to various stakeholders in many more ways.

A fading success story

While organisations have played a significant role in the progress made by humanity, they are also in the spotlight as we are challenging the planetary boundaries and what is meaningful. Organisations play a central role in how we affect the well-being of our ecosystems and ourselves. Concerns are growing on topics such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, human inequality, and mental illness such as depression.

In the face of such challenges, we are starting to question our organisations’ roles, contributions, and impact in a broader sense and stakeholder perspective. To what extent do they have a meaningful purpose, business, and contribution? How do they influence their customers, users, employees, other stakeholders, and their surroundings at large? What are their social and environmental footprints? 

It has become clear that we need to rethink our organisations as a new reality is emerging.

We are also beginning to question our organisations’ underlying beliefs, ideals, and operating principles, often rooted in military traditions and early industrialisation. Could the widespread hierarchical structures of direction and control limit people’s ability to function, grow and contribute at their best? Is single-minded maximisation of financial results a meaningful and long-term sustainable goal? Are such ideals and practices crippling key organisational qualities such as engagement, wellness, productivity, innovation capability, and ultimately their resilience? 

It has become clear that we need to rethink our organisations as a new reality is emerging.

Navigating a new reality

Organisations are facing increasingly challenging conditions in their surroundings, such as the impacts of technological and climate change, often referred to as VUCA conditions (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). Just like a ship entering rough and unpredictable weather and waters requiring new capabilities such as more dynamic navigation and a highly responsive crew.

The new reality will be pushing organisations to the limits of their ability to renew and create sustainable value, requiring new leadership and organisational capabilities. This will represent personal challenges to each and every individual within those organisations, and a high level of motivation will be needed to take on and tackle such challenges and development needs. 

The new reality will be pushing organisations to the limits of their ability to renew and create sustainable value.

At the same time, many people are starting to question the role, contribution, impact, and operating principles of their organisation in relation to their own worldviews, beliefs, passions, and needs. We may think of this as a ship heading in the wrong direction, with more and more people in the crew starting to notice it with a growing concern and unwillingness to go on. This could be called cognitive dissonance of organisations, and is likely to lead to poor performance, lack of renewal, and eventually even existential anxiety and collapse. 

The challenges at hand

In this new reality, organisations are facing challenges on two fronts: First, the external pressures from VUCA environments, requiring new levels of innovation and transformation capabilities to stay relevant. Secondly, the internal tensions and frictions resulting from organisational ideals and practices out of sync with human nature, weakening the engagement, productivity, creativity and ability to renew so much needed to develop stronger resilience and progress.

“Business as usual” will clearly not be enough to meet these challenges, neither for the individual organisations nor our shared future, but what is stopping us from creating the change needed? 

“Business as usual” will clearly not be enough to meet the challenges at hand. What keeps us from changing and how can we move forward?

First of all, existing organisational frameworks tend to be self-preserving and lead to “more of the same”, meaning we need to deliberately renew our organisational frameworks and ultimately reinvent our organisations. In order to be credible and have real impact, such renewal efforts need to be endorsed and preferably driven by top-level decision-makers as key stakeholders and role models. Furthermore, policy-makers can play a key role in inspiring and enabling organisational development by designing suitable regulatory frameworks.

Secondly, our brains tend to work on autopilot and follow established ways of thinking and doing, meaning we need to consciously break out of existing patterns in order to create new thoughts and behaviours needed for change to happen. This is a challenge for every person and leader, and one of the primary challenges that need to be considered when designing new organisational frameworks.

How do we move forward?

How can we more deliberately renew ourselves?

There are no clear answers nor quick fixes to the fundamental challenges we are facing, and the main purpose of this article is to spur new dialogues about our emerging reality and possible ways forward. However, in efforts to more deliberately renew ourselves there are at least a couple of approaches that look very promising and therefore worth mentioning:

Missions are gaining interest and traction as vehicles for broader and deeper transformation efforts, partly thanks to economist Mariana Mazzucato and her work with governments to deal with some of the world’s biggest challenges. The mission-driven approach can be helpful in many ways, such as mobilising efforts across existing organisational structures and creating attraction around what we want to create rather than the problems at hand. This is not only relevant to societal transformation but also deeper renewal at large, and truly mission-driven organisations are more likely to be successful and tackle the turbulent times ahead.

Leaning into crisis is a totally different approach that allows us to learn and develop by experiencing or imaging crisis situations that set aside established thinking and ways of doing. The Cape Town Drought Response Learning Initiative is a great example of how a crisis situation can provide valuable learning for future resilience. By carefully facilitating development processes utilising crisis situations and -scenarios as burning platforms for change, we can help develop new perspectives, goals, solutions and qualities that not only will help us deal with future crises but also create meaningful progress in the absence of them. Also this approach is equally relevant for developing more resilient leaders and organisations as it is to develop our broader communities and societies, and crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic may prove to be a strong catalyst for redefining our organisations and work life.

Agile practices and self-management are practical, hands-on approaches to become more responsive, innovative, and make transformation happen, utilising new ways of setting goals, working, and making decisions that invites more creativity, experimentation, learning, and collective wisdom so much need in a VUCA world.

How do you and your organisation lean into the future?

Here are a few topics you may want to consider, and perhaps get in touch with me to discuss: 

• How do you work more deliberately with goal setting that is meaningful in times of turbulence and transformation?
• How do you cultivate and utilise deeper and collective intelligence in your leadership and management?
• How do you develop more productive, agile and resilient personal, team and organisational qualities?

In short, what do you want to create, contribute, and become? 

American author Zig Ziglar captures the essence of this article in a beautiful way:

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.